University Of Phoenix's Wings Get Clipped

03/25/2015 04:55 pm ET

Wall Street Journal

Bloomberg via Getty Images

Executives at Apollo Education Group Inc. would love to live their marketing slogan: “I am a Phoenix.”

While the once-soaring for-profit education giant isn’t in ashes, its business has shriveled. For example, degreed enrollment was most recently 227,400 students. While that is far more than at the largest traditional U.S. university, it is less than half Apollo’s own peak five years ago and down 13.5% from the first quarter of fiscal 2014.